Final Fantasy: Cheese!
by Rhianwen
Summary: A fixation with the latest Ultimate Whimsy video game sweeps North Valley High, and Malcolm, after having his honor insulted in the cruelest way possible, decides to use this against Sam and Co. Naturally, his plan backfires. Horribly. Read on!
1. Chapter 1

Final Fantasy Cheese  
  
  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own them, they don't like me. Especially Tanker. I keep making fun of him. And Sam. I keep making fun of HIM. And Malcolm and Sydney. I keep trying to hook them up. And Jennifer. I openly loathe her. Amp and Yoli...well, they just say I smell.  
  
  
  
Notes: [Sigh] I don't know why I can't stay away from this universe... I suppose obsession is just an ugly, ugly thing. But at least it's producing some nicely insane stories, and writing them serves well to distract me from the fact that I don't have a social life. Waay! ^_^  
  
Anyway, I'd just like to say that I personally love role-playing games, despite the fact that I'm taking every opportunity here to mock them beyond all reason.  
  
  
  
And now, oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooon with the pointless parody goodness!  
  
  
  
  
  
"Wow, this game is great, isn't it?" Sam Collins enthused as the jaunty victory music proclaimed yet another mark in his favour.  
  
"When do I get to try?" Amp Pere pleaded.  
  
"In a minute," Sam muttered, already engrossed in yet another battle of wits and skill. His opponent was crafty, but he, Sam, was better. This joker didn't stand a chance...  
  
Amp sighed. Ever since Sam had installed that Solitaire game on his computer, it had been impossible to talk to him.  
  
"Hey, if you think THAT game's good," Tanker proclaimed, barrelling down the stairs, "just check THIS one out!"  
  
"In a minute," Sam muttered again, apparently too obsessed to be original.  
  
"What is it, Tanker?" Amp called, too relieved for words that he finally had someone else to talk to. Sam, of course, was completely engrossed in his game, and Sydney, stretched out across Sam's bed and leaning against the wall, was equally engrossed in a thick volume that neither of the young men even wanted to try to pronounce, let alone read.  
  
"Amp, this is truly a great day for all Funstation players. Ultimate Whimsy Twelve is out for Funstation!"  
  
"Ultimate Whimsy Twelve?" Sydney repeated, glancing up from her book. "Are they still making those Ultimate Whimsy games?"  
  
Tanker and Amp turned to stare incredulously at her, joined by Sam, whose astonishment at this question was apparently enough to jolt him from his Solitaire induced reverie.  
  
"Sydney!" Tanker admonished. "Of course they're still making them! They're only the best games on earth!"  
  
"I don't know," Amp said thoughtfully. "I kind of like the Mondoguy games."  
  
"And Sonic the Bunny," Sam added.  
  
"Yeah," Sydney agreed with a giggle. "Those are cute."  
  
"You're such a girl," Tanker sighed fondly, smiling a rather dopey smile. "Anyway, Sammy, I just picked up my copy, so we gonna try it out?"  
  
"Of course!" Sam scoffed, already on his feet, the Solitaire game still flashing, forgotten, on his computer screen.  
  
'Great,' Amp reflected, edging slowly to the computer against the wave of (two) young men edging toward the Funstation. 'Maybe I can get a try on that Solitaire game now...'  
  
However, the next moment, he, too, completely forgot all things Solitaire as Tanker reached into his jacket and withdrew a disc case bearing the words, 'Ultimate Whimsy XII.' Right beneath the words, the image of a young blond man, face solemn but blue eyes twinkling, with a sword slung over his shoulder, was splashed over the cover. From the other side of the cover, a dark-haired man, also with a sword slung over his shoulder, glared at the blond, dark eyes burning with hatred clear even in a computer-graphic.  
  
"Wow..." Amp breathed. "It looks great."  
  
"It is," Tanker said emphatically. "I saw a demo going on outside Bits 'n Bytes Bayou, and it was awesome! The characters are so realistic!"  
  
"So, what's the story of this one?" Sam asked eagerly.  
  
"We'll see as we play, man," Tanker chuckled.  
  
"Right," Sam agreed sheepishly. "Well, slap that baby in the machine!"  
  
"Alright!" Tanker exclaimed, slamming the disc into the Funstation.  
  
Sam stared in dismay at the disc, now in two jagged pieces, in the game console.  
  
"Okay..." he said slowly. "Go back to the store, buy a new copy, and then GENTLY set it into the machine."  
  
"Alright!" Tanker exclaimed, darting out the door.  
  
Twenty minutes later, during which no one had moved a muscle for some reason, he reappeared with a new copy and obliged, and the next moment, a stunning bit of computer-animated cinema filled the television screen.  
  
It started with the blond man from the cover, seen from the back, standing in front of a castle, staring up at it.  
  
The next scene was that of a young woman with long, dark hair and dark eyes running through the streets of a town, clad in a white dress and green cloak, with a bundle in her arms, watched from afar by the dark-haired man from the cover.  
  
Then, briefly, the image of two people, identities unknown, clasping hands flashed across the screen.  
  
Next was a shot of a knight, a strange purple creature, a large man clad in a leather jacket, and the blond swordsman marching through a forest, shoulder-to-shoulder, ready to take on anything in their path.  
  
After that came a scene in which the blond man went flying backwards into a tavern table as a fist connected with his face. Then the camera angle changed to show a pretty blonde tavern girl glaring angrily at him, hands on her hips.  
  
In the next flash of image, the blond man looked into the water, only to see the dark-haired man's face reflected back.  
  
Then the scene was that of the blond man, the knight, the purple creature, the leather-clad man, the blonde tavern girl, now clad in a blue cloak, another girl with black hair and dark skin, clad in a red cloak, and finally the dark-haired girl seen running earlier, all seated around a fire on a grassy plain.  
  
Then, as the music became more foreboding, the scene was of the seven, walking slowly through a dark castle. Suddenly, up ahead of them, the dark- haired man appeared in a flash of red light. The members of the party started back in horror. The dark-haired man disappeared, and then reappeared behind the dark-haired girl in green. Then, as he grabbed her shoulders, both of them disappeared in another spectacular flash of light, causing all the other party members to shield their eyes and step back.  
  
Finally, the scene was that of the blond swordsman and the blonde tavern girl seated on the edge of a cliff, with the sun setting over them.  
  
Then, as the music died away, the words "Ultimate Whimsy XII" scrolled onto the screen.  
  
"Wow," Sam breathed. "That was awesome."  
  
"And that's just the beginning," Tanker reminded him, grinning widely.  
  
"I can't wait to see how it plays," Sam said enthusiastically as the three boys gathered around the controller.  
  
"Is this the game with all the sheep?" Amp wondered.  
  
Sam and Tanker exchanged helpless expressions, and turned to the television screen, which now showed a short, blocky version of the blond swordsman from the opening scenes, standing in the middle of a crowded street.  
  
Sam set the little fellow into action, and from that point on, the boys were lost amid the lure of Ultimate Whimsy XII.  
  
  
  
  
  
"Hey, guys?" Sydney ventured several hours later. "Does anyone want to go out for a walk?"  
  
"In a minute," Sam replied absently, clearly not having heard her words.  
  
"You guys have been at that for six hours! Isn't it time to take a break yet?"  
  
"In a minute," Tanker replied absently.  
  
Sydney rolled her eyes and turned back to her book. Then an idea occurred to her.  
  
"Does anyone want to go out and step on small dogs with me?"  
  
"In a minute," Amp replied absently.  
  
"Well, I've gotta get home. I'll see you all later," she finally called to them, starting up the stairs out of Sam's basement room.  
  
"In a minute," the boys mumbled together.  
  
Sydney shook her head.  
  
"I hate video games...NOW who will I find to step on small dogs with me?"  
  
In her mind, Malcolm sidled up to her.  
  
"I'd step on small dogs with you...but I fear that would be hopelessly out of character for both of us, even given the fact that this is a Rhianwen 'fic."  
  
"Er, fourth wall, Malcolm," she reminded him in her head.  
  
"Dammit! Four pages in, and already the fourth wall is shattered! This does not bode well."  
  
"Er...right. So, how about being a gentleman and walking me home?" she asked, by now completely ignoring the fact that the Malcolm in her head existed only there.  
  
"Now, I KNOW that would be out of character," Malcolm said, rolling his eyes in disbelief and disappearing in a puff of logic.  
  
  
  
  
  
"Hey, Bob!" Tanker called to one of his football pals as he strode into the cafeteria the next morning. "You seen the new Ultimate Whimsy game yet?"  
  
"Hell, yeah, man," Bob replied jubilantly with a huge grin. "Got my copy reserved. Julie and I played it all night. I'm crashed today, but damn, great game, huh?"  
  
"Yeah! Sam and Amp and Syd and I played it all night, too."  
  
"Cool. I'm surprised you didn't come to blows over who got to play, though."  
  
"Well, Sam and I took turns. He'd play an hour, then I'd play an hour."  
  
"What about Amp and Syd?"  
  
"Hey, it's Sam's system, and my game. And anyway, Amp just wanted to watch. Syd...well, she doesn't like video games much."  
  
"Oh, yeah? What is wrong with that girl? This isn't just a game! This is Ultimate Whimsy XII!"  
  
"That's what I said, man!"  
  
"Yeah...well, I gotta take off. Julie'll be wondering where I am...unless she fell asleep again. She's kinda tired today, too..."  
  
"Okay. See you, Bob."  
  
"Bye, Tank."  
  
And so Bob turned and left the cafeteria.  
  
"Hey, Sam," he called to the sandy-haired boy as they passed at the doorway. "Hey, Amp. Hey, Sydney."  
  
"Hi, Bob," all three chorused together.  
  
"Don't you just love Bob?" Sam asked in a hushed voice.  
  
"Everyone loves Bob!" Amp declared. "Right, Sydney?"  
  
"Yeah," she agreed, smiling fondly after him. "North Valley just wouldn't be North Valley without Bob."  
  
"We love Bob," they chorused together as the much-loved young man, who oddly enough, had never had a speaking role, hurried past in search of his lovely redheaded girlfriend, who likewise, had never been granted a speaking role on the television portrayal of this great pageantry of teenage life.  
  
And then the little elves that lived in the drinking fountain and made the water go emerged therefrom to patch up the fourth wall that Rhianwen so carelessly shattered to smithereens...again.  
  
"Bye, guys!" Amp called after them as they slid back down the drain. "And say hi to Santa for me!"  
  
"Okay, that was weird," Sam commented unnecessarily to Sydney.  
  
"Not for this high school," she sighed, shaking her head.  
  
"Yeah, I guess you're right," Sam agreed before his attention was diverted. "Oh, hey, Tank! We've been lookin' for you, big guy! Why didn't you come over before school?"  
  
"I woke up late, Sammy," Tanker explained sheepishly as his three friends seated themselves around the table he had claimed as their own for that day. "Too much Ultimate Whimsy, I guess..."  
  
"Why don't you tell him what you were doing when I came to pick you up, Sam?" Sydney suggested, glaring at him as ferociously as she could glare at anyone.  
  
"Well...I was having a quick battle."  
  
"Try TWENTY quick battles. I had to pry the controller out of his hands with a crowbar! I'm just glad Elizabeth had one on hand...although I'll never understand why a five-year old girl would need one...and I'm going to have a headache all day from where it hit me when she dropped it down the laundry chute," she finished sadly, rubbing a newly formed lump on her head, nearly hidden by her hat.  
  
"It's an awesome game, Syd!" Sam protested.  
  
"Oh, I know what's going on. You're addicted again," Sydney said grimly.  
  
"I am not!"  
  
"You are, too. I recognize all the signs. Don't you remember the hours and hours you spent on Super Mario Brothers when you first got a Nintendo? The weeks you spent on Tetris? The MONTHS you spent on Ultimate Whimsy VII?"  
  
"Yeah! And what about all that time you spent staring at that patch of grass in the football field, waiting for it to grow?" Amp demanded.  
  
"Amp...that was you," Tanker reminded him.  
  
"Oh, right. Hey, I wonder how that's doing..."  
  
"You're addicted, Sam," Sydney was meanwhile reiterating.  
  
Sam fixed her with a stern eye.  
  
"I have it under control this time," he assured her. "Tell you what: I won't even mention it again for the rest of today."  
  
"I'm not optimistic, but deal," she agreed.  
  
Silence reigned at the table for a grand total of eight seconds.  
  
"So..." Tanker began, "we gonna play again after school?"  
  
"You know it, buddy!" Sam proclaimed jubilantly.  
  
"Oh, I knew he wouldn't last the hour," Sydney sighed, rolling her eyes.  
  
"I can't stand it! I have to go check on that grass!" Amp wailed, leaping to his feet and bolting from the cafeteria, nearly colliding headlong with Mrs. Starkey, who was emerging from the hallway, motorcycle helmet in hand, leather jacket slung over one shoulder. "Sorry, Mrs. Starkey."  
  
"Don't worry about it, kid. That grass again, huh?"  
  
Amp nodded sheepishly.  
  
Mrs. Starkey nodded thoughtfully, then leaned in closer.  
  
"Let me know how that's doin', alright?" she muttered conspiratorially.  
  
"Deal!" Amp agreed jubilantly before bounding away.  
  
"What a weirdo," she reflected.  
  
"Hey, Mrs. S.!" Sam called.  
  
"Hi there, kids. What's new?"  
  
"Sam's addicted again," Sydney informed her with the utmost solemnity.  
  
"I am not, Syd!"  
  
"You are, too."  
  
"Hold on," Mrs. Starkey requested, holding up a hand. "Addicted to what? To Jennifer? Hate to tell you, Sydney, but we all figured that out a long time ago."  
  
"No, not to Jennifer! Well...not only to Jennifer. No, this time he's addicted to Ultimate Whimsy XII."  
  
Mrs. Starkey frowned.  
  
"Are they still making those Ultimate Whimsy games?"  
  
Sam gibbered incoherently, waving his arms about frantically as Tanker hyperventilated into a paper bag.  
  
"Oh, but Mrs. Starkey, they're the best games ever," Sydney informed her sarcastically. "Right. Personally, I think the Sonic the Bunny games are the best ones ever. These...they're all graphics, and no plot."  
  
"Hey, hold it, Syd. This one has a plot, which you'd have known if you hadn't bailed before we got into it."  
  
"Six hours, Sam. I sat there for six hours, and I didn't see a plot."  
  
"That's because you were busy playing that Solitaire game," Sam commented mildly. "For the entire six hours. I wonder who's addicted now..."  
  
"What?! I am not!" Sydney sputtered indignantly. "And at least there's a point to Solitaire, besides beating things up."  
  
"There's a great plot!" Tanker insisted in his best friend's defence.  
  
"Let me guess," Sydney began, putting a finger to her chin as if in deep thought. "There's a blond hero, who's either really outgoing, or the strong, silent type. And there's a girl with long, dark hair, who is somehow the key to most of the plot, and who eventually hooks up with the blond hero, much to the chagrin of the villain, who is somehow connected to the hero, and wants the girl for himself."  
  
"Actually," Tanker began smugly, "the plot's a lot more original in XII. The Ultimate Whimsy people threw us for a loop this time. The lead female - the princess - hooks up with the knight instead."  
  
"Wow, what a revolutionary idea!" a voice from behind a nearby table noted sarcastically. "I haven't seen that done since...well, since Ultimate Whimsy IX! And Ultimate Whimsy IV! And about ninety percent of the role- playing games out there."  
  
"Oh, shut up, Malcolm," Tanker requested gently.  
  
"Have YOU played it yet, Malcolm?" Sam asked.  
  
"Actually, I finished it at 11:00 last night," he informed everyone proudly.  
  
"Wow!" Amp, Tanker, Sam, and various and sundry other students listening in breathed in awe, for once very impressed by Malcolm.  
  
"A very wise man once said that your prowess at video games has no bearing on your...size," Mrs. Starkey told the young men pointedly. "You might all want to keep that in mind."  
  
"Are you sure it wasn't a woman who said it, Mrs. Starkey?" Sydney asked. "A guy would never say that."  
  
"True," Mrs. Starkey conceded. "Well, gotta get back to work."  
  
"Bye, Mrs. Starkey," Sydney called after her mournfully, wondering who on earth would be her companion in sanity now.  
  
"So, how was the ending?" Sam asked eagerly.  
  
"Oh, you don't want me to spoil it, now do you?"  
  
"Just...give us a hint," Tanker suggested.  
  
"Well," Malcolm began thoughtfully, "it's the last thing you'd ever expect."  
  
"C'mon, tell us! Tell us!" Sam pleaded.  
  
"Why?" Malcolm asked, smirking. "Because you know you'll never be able to finish the game and see it for yourself?"  
  
Sam drew in a breath, preparing to push himself to his feet and force the other boy to take it back. This was an attack on his honour! He glanced to his left. From the ferocious glare Tanker was shooting at the pasty, dark- haired boy, he seemed to see it much the same way.  
  
"Never mind, Sammy. I'll bet he used cheat codes, anyway," Tanker muttered conspiratorially, but carefully loud enough for Malcolm to hear.  
  
"Take. That. Back," Malcolm commanded, pushing out of his own chair.  
  
"Why should I?" Tanker asked, casually folding his arms behind his head and leaning back in his chair.  
  
"Truth hurts, eh, Malcolm?" Sam snickered.  
  
"You'll regret that, Collins," Malcolm averred as he gathered his things together.  
  
Sydney blinked, startled, her chair nearly tipping over from the breeze created as Malcolm stormed angrily past it.  
  
"What just happened?"  
  
  
  
Moments later, in the hallway...the only hallway...in the entire school...  
  
  
  
"My, my," Malcolm groused. "The author certainly is turning into something of a smart ass, isn't she?"  
  
"I do not understand, meat-thing," Kilokhan droned. "What author are you referring to?"  
  
Malcolm looked slightly panicked.  
  
"Er, never mind. So, can you bring my virus to life, or not?"  
  
"Explain the plot to me again, meat-thing."  
  
"You'll bring my virus to life and send it into Sam Collins' Funstation gaming system. The next time he turns it on, he'll get a...nasty surprise."  
  
Kilokhan made a sound remarkably like a snort of derision.  
  
"I will have no part of this. It is disgraceful, the way you put my great power to such paltry use."  
  
"Hold on a second, Kilokhan. Have I told you what this virus can do to Servo?"  
  
"Negative. You have not."  
  
"Well, it has the power to knock Servo right out of the circuitry of the game console and into the game itself."  
  
"Ah! And there Servo will meet his end?"  
  
"Well, let's just say that unless Servo is familiar with Dodecahedronsoft, he'll have a bit of trouble finding his way home."  
  
"Speak plainly, meat-thing."  
  
"Fine," Malcolm sighed, rolling his eyes. "Yes, Servo will meet his end."  
  
"Excellent! We shall do this. And then, the digital world shall be mine for the plundering, and the fleshling world shall fall beneath my might!"  
  
"And even better," the dark-haired teen smirked silently, "Collins and his Neanderthal pal will find themselves playing a much more vivid version of Ultimate Whimsy than they ever wanted to..."  
  
A beam of light shot forth from Kilokhan's side of the laptop screen and hit the creature displayed on the other side, which immediately began to wave its arms frantically.  
  
"Wait! I don't wanna go! Nooooooooooooo!" the virus whimpered as it flew down the blue tube-thingy into the digital world.  
  
Malcolm frowned.  
  
"Er, right. Kilokhan, why was it doing that?"  
  
"I do not know, meat-thing," Kilokhan replied, sounding vaguely confused. "Perhaps your design this time was a little too...peaceful."  
  
"Hmm..." Malcolm mused. "Perhaps designing Kiki based on that teddy bear I found in my attic was a bad idea..."  
  
"Kiki!" Kilokhan exclaimed in disbelief. "You have named your virus Kiki?!"  
  
"Well, why not?" Malcolm demanded, hurt.  
  
"Kiki?!"  
  
"Yes, Kiki," Malcolm confirmed. "What of it?"  
  
Kilokhan sighed as Kiki reached his destination and curled up in a little ball in the corner, whimpering in fear.  
  
"Well, I believe that we have found the source of our problem."  
  
"Oh, enough!" Malcolm exclaimed. "I have a class to get to!"  
  
At this point, Malcolm stopped short.  
  
"A class?" he repeated, frowning. "Since when do I attend my classes?"  
  
"Just do it!" a voice remarkably like Rhianwen's barked from the sky.  
  
"Fine, fine," Malcolm sighed, rolling his eyes as he shut his locked, grabbed his book bag, and started from the hallway.  
  
  
  
  
  
End Notes: Alright; first things first, I promise that this story will be no more that three bits, total. Okay, maybe four. [Sheepish grin] Well, I'll shoot for no more than four at any rate.  
  
Oh, and another thing: the character of Bob, although based on an extra from the show, is one that Bezo and I created for our own insane story in this same fandom. I have used him here without Bezo's permission. I don't think he'll sue me, though. He knows I'm flat broke. ^_^ 


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2  
  
  
  
'I hate English class,' Sam reflected mournfully that afternoon, gazing out the window at the blessed freedom that waited just outside. The sun was shining, the air smelled like warm root beer, and he, for one, was quite disgusted with being stuck in class when he could be outside enjoying nature...or better yet, playing Ultimate Whimsy XII!  
  
"Ultimate Whimsy XII..." Sam murmured happily, his eyes going all wide and shiny, quite unbeknownst to him.  
  
"Hey, Jen," Yolonda Pratchert muttered, nudging her best friend with her elbow. "I think Sam's a little distracted."  
  
Jennifer giggled and blushed slightly, wondering briefly what exactly was on Sam's mind that he found so much more important than the imagery in Marlowe's 'The Tragical Historie of Dr. Faustus.' She blushed even more brightly as she reflected that it was, without a doubt, her.  
  
"Poor Sam's grades have probably dropped at least a letter grade since we started going out," she murmured back to Yoli, who snorted in disbelief.  
  
"Hey, no one who talks to Sydney on a daily basis is failing any class."  
  
"Mmm," Jennifer agreed inarticulately, and Yoli snickered quietly at the slight glaze that had come over her best friend's large blue eyes. Well, those two had each other.  
  
And her? Yoli's eyes grew warm and slightly dreamy as they lit on a familiar rather out-of-control mop of short brown hair, topping a head belonging to a young man currently garbed in the traditional outfit of a Cossack dancer. Maybe she'd finally tell him how she felt if they happened to see each other this weekend...  
  
  
  
"Now to discuss the group projects alluded to in our last class. By the way, can anyone explain to me the concept of allusion?" Mrs. Winters, a young, quiet, unassuming woman with a mass of mousy brown hair pulled into as prim a bun as she could manage, a great love of literature, and the capabilities, if not the personality for teaching high school English, asked hopefully. Her expression quickly melted into one of disappointment when the one student paying any degree of attention glanced quickly around the room, came to the conclusion that no one else was going to volunteer, and raised her hand. "Anyone other than Sydney?" Mrs. Winters asked, shooting the girl a grateful smile.  
  
No response.  
  
"Oh, well," the disgruntled teacher sighed. "I guess it doesn't really matter when compared with what TV you might get to watch tonight. Why don't we get right on to discussing the class assignments?"  
  
A roomful of students simply looked back at her, their gazes seeming to go right through her. She sighed again. Time for drastic measures...  
  
"Pop quiz tomorrow!"  
  
With that, Mrs. Avery Winters accomplished in three words what her entire lecture had failed to do: she had captured the attention of every student in the room. Not only that, but she had stirred in them a depth of emotion - and if it was panic, well, what of that? - that she had always been firmly convinced literature SHOULD do, even if one was being forced by the school board to take a course in it. She smiled a placid smile.  
  
"Now that I have your attention, I would like to split you into groups for the project we talked about the other day." Well, I talked about while you stared at me like several young cows staring at the lights of an oncoming train, she didn't add. Aloud, at any rate. "You remember; I was going to split you into groups of five, and you were to each take a portion of the book and discuss what you saw to be the defining characteristic of the section."  
  
A hand shot up.  
  
"Yes, Sam?"  
  
"Can we choose our own groups?" the sandy-haired boy asked pleadingly.  
  
She suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. Several students didn't, all well able by this time to read their peer's mind. Translation: can I work with Jennifer?  
  
"No. I thought it might be nice to have you work in slightly different groups this time around."  
  
Sam's face fell. 'Ew...' he thought as he picked it up and put it back on with several rather disgusting squishy noises.  
  
"Knock it off, Rhianwen!" he shouted at the ceiling as he fit it into place.  
  
"Oh, fine," a voice emanating from the ceiling, sighed. "You have no sense of humour, Collins!"  
  
"Where have I heard that voice before?" Malcolm mused briefly.  
  
Mrs. Winters smiled uncertainly at this rather odd exchange, deciding rather wisely to get on with the plot.  
  
"But since you'll likely be devastated if you should end up in a group without a...certain someone, Sam, I'll be kind when choosing your group."  
  
"Great!" Sam exclaimed enthusiastically.  
  
"You'll work with Tanker, Sydney, Amp, and Malcolm."  
  
"Just who is this kind to, Mrs. Winters?" Sydney called out, suppressing a pained groan.  
  
"Well, you could at least TRY to hide your reluctance at working with me," Malcolm huffed, crossing his arms and turning away, going through a particularly cheesy bit on internal monologue in which he wondered to himself in the ridiculously overblown language that Rhianwen seems addicted to, why Sydney's reaction hurt his feelings ever so slightly.  
  
"Who's talking about you?" the dark-haired girl asked, completely missing a golden opportunity for a rejoining bit of cheesy internal monologue. This, perhaps, was for the best. "At least YOU might work."  
  
"Hey!" Sam, Tanker exclaimed.  
  
"That's my cue!" Amp exclaimed as he leapt from his seat and launched into his dance.  
  
  
  
  
  
An hour later, it seemed as though the dance had not ended, as the young man bounced merrily about Sam's basement bedroom-hideaway.  
  
"Why don't we just be straightforward and have a panel discussion about the scene?" Malcolm suggested wearily.  
  
"No way!" Sam exclaimed. "We have to do something fun! Something unique! Something-"  
  
"That you're gonna end up doing zero amount of work on?" Sydney suggested amiably.  
  
"Yeah!" Sam agreed cheerfully, then frowned. "No!"  
  
"We could do a sock puppet show," Amp said thoughtfully.  
  
"No!" Tanker barked "I refuse to put a sock on my hand and make it talk."  
  
"Unless it's a hazing ritual for the football team," Sydney added, flipping absently through her copy of 'The Tragical Historie of Dr. Faustus.'  
  
Sam and Tanker stared at her incredulously.  
  
"What's with you today, Syd?" Tanker finally ventured.  
  
She frowned.  
  
"I...don't know," she admitted. Then she gestured to Malcolm. "It must be his influence."  
  
"Oh, shut up," he grumbled, looking up briefly from his own copy of the required book.  
  
"Yeah, probably," Tanker agreed, scowling at the shorter youth.  
  
"Hey, guys," Sam spoke up, his eyes glittering excitedly. "How about a quick battle or two before we get down to work?"  
  
"Yeah!" Tanker exclaimed, throwing down his book and leaping from his chair to land in front of the game console, followed closely by the sandy-haired boy.  
  
Malcolm, who suddenly became a good deal less interested in his book, watched him very carefully, cackling inwardly with glee and awaiting the miracle.  
  
"Sam! Tanker!" Sydney barked, starting toward Tanker. "No game! We have to work!"  
  
'Oh, no!' Malcolm groaned inwardly. 'Now she's going to get sucked in, too! I knew that Sam and Tanker wouldn't be any aid on this project, but now I'll have to do all the work alone!'  
  
No, that absolutely could not be. Malcolm's laziness for once prompted him into more immediate action. Pushing himself to his feet, Malcolm darted across the room, his goal to shove Sydney out of the way before Tanker could turn on the game system. Unfortunately, she happened to turn just before he could reach her. With a startled yelp at the sight of a Malcolm lunging towards her, she leapt back, knocking into Amp, who had been drawn to the television as the memory of all the pretty colours from the game yesterday flashed through his mind. Amp tripped over Sam, who was crouched next to Tanker, and fell backwards beneath the weight of both Sydney and Malcolm.  
  
"YAAAAAH!" he howled as the three landed on the ever-unfortunate Sam and Tanker, just as Tanker hit the power button.  
  
At this point, a strange thing happened. That is, nothing at all. So, in other words, strange given the universe that all this is occurring within. Or rather, not occurring.  
  
The five teens lay on the lime green carpet, staring dazedly at whatever happened to be before their eyes, pondering what had just happened.  
  
'Hmm...less dramatic than I had expected, this being sucked into video games...' Malcolm reflected, wondering exactly what it was that his head was cradled on that made such a pleasant pillow.  
  
'Damn...after this, no one's gonna be in the mood for video games,' Sam reflected sadly, wondering at the back of his mind who that was with their hand spread out over his butt. He wasn't entirely sure if it would be worse to find that it was Sydney, or anyone else. Certainly, the wrath of Tanker if the owner of this mysterious hand should prove to be Sydney was formidable, but if it were any of the other members of this impromptu doggie pile...well, that just didn't bear thinking about.  
  
'Oww...' Amp reflected, wondering whose shoe that was in his mouth.  
  
'I guess this is what comes of trying to keep the average teenage male from his video game,' Sydney reflected, wondering vaguely exactly who seemed to be using her chest as a pillow. Certainly, the cold, somewhat slimy sensation seeping through her tee shirt, somewhat like hair gel, suggested that it must be Tanker.  
  
'Football...' Tanker reflected mournfully, but then he grinned wickedly as his hand found itself resting on something pleasantly soft. He'd recognize her cute little butt anywhere...  
  
"Hey, is everyone alright?" Sam finally managed weakly.  
  
A murmur of confirmation greeted this inquiry.  
  
"Great. Now, whoever's got their hand on my ass, could you please move it?"  
  
And so it was that a very, very embarrassed Tanker jerked his hand away from his best friend's posterior and realized that perhaps he didn't know his sort-of-maybe-someday-girlfriend as well as he thought.  
  
"Yeah; and while we're at it, can the person with their shoe in my mouth please get it out?" Amp would have loved to say. However, the sneaker shoved into his mouth somewhat muffled any would-be protests from the young man.  
  
  
  
Meanwhile, in the digital world...  
  
"Kiki, my child!" Kilokhan barked. "Why are you not wreaking havoc?"  
  
Kiki the Reluctant Virus looked up from the corner, where he was huddled, rocking back and forth and whimpering.  
  
"I wanna go home!" the creature wailed, little tear-jets somehow shooting to the sides.  
  
"Wreak the havoc you were created to wreak, my child!" Kilokhan commanded.  
  
"I don't wanna!" Kiki whimpered.  
  
"Do it!" Kilokhan growled, shaking a menacing fist at Kiki.  
  
"Nooo," Kiki whimpered again, curling up into a tighter ball in his safe, happy little corner.  
  
"NOW!"  
  
"But...but...but..."  
  
"DO IT!"  
  
"Oh...okay," Kiki agreed sadly, climbing to his feet and waddling over to one of the many brightly lit circuit towers.  
  
"Ah...now my plan shall come to fruition, and Servo shall be destroyed!" Kilokhan gloated.  
  
However, it seemed that nothing could be that easy for Kilokhan. Kiki had reached the circuit tower, and swung one arm unenthusiastically at it. His arm bounced weakly off of the brightly coloured plastic.  
  
"The tower's too hard," he explained sheepishly.  
  
Kilokhan would have gritted his teeth, if only he'd had any.  
  
"Then kick it!"  
  
So, Kiki tried, and the results were much the same.  
  
'Ping!' went his tiny claws off of the tower.  
  
"Oh, for the love of..." Kilokhan's angry mutter trailed off as he sent a beam of light shooting from where he resided to destroy the tower that Kiki didn't seem to be able to dent.  
  
Kiki watched in awe as the tower exploded into many brightly coloured pieces.  
  
"Does that mean I don't have to do anything?" he asked slowly.  
  
  
  
Back in Sam's basement, Malcolm was reflecting with a roll of his eyes that he had spoken a little too soon, concerning this 'being sucked into video games' being less painful than he had expected. Indeed, as a beam of blue light shot from the Funstation to envelop the pile of teens in severe pain, the main thought echoing through his head was,  
  
'Oh, this is going to hurt...'  
  
And hurt, it did. Not so much the being sucked into the game, but the fact that, when the beam of blue light transported them into this new world, it saw fit to rematerialize them four feet above the ground, which, at that point, happened to be a cobblestone street.  
  
"Ow..." the pile 'o teens whimpered as they bounced painfully to the ground.  
  
Then, as they disentangled themselves from one another, a curious thing happened. One by one, they began to disappear. First, as Tanker finally took his shoe out of Amp's mouth and climbed to his feet, he vanished. Then, from his prone position half on top of Sam and half on the ground, Amp vanished.  
  
"Uh..." Sam began, but was interrupted as Sydney vanished.  
  
He turned to Malcolm.  
  
"Hey, do you think this is supposed to be happening?" he asked, then rolled his eyes in annoyance as Malcolm vanished. "At least that one's no big loss," he reflected philosophically. "Where the heck is this, anyway?"  
  
He climbed stiffly to his feet and looked around, his eyes growing wide with disbelief, as they took in the surroundings, drastically different from the comfortably disorganized basement hideaway that they should have been.  
  
He was standing alone in the middle of a quietly bustling city street of cobblestone, quaint little shops lining it on either side.  
  
"Uh..." he began uncertainly as a voice bellowed from behind him to move.  
  
He leapt aside just in time to keep from being trampled flat by two horses harnessed to a carriage.  
  
"Uh..." he began again as a few very confusing truths finally hit him.  
  
First of all, there was no technology of any kind anywhere to be seen. From what he could see, electricity was a foreign concept, as did indeed seem to be any gadgetry more complex than a pocket watch.  
  
The next observation that sauntered its way through Sam's confused and aching brain was the fact that his clothes were not his own. He was, instead, garbed in a reasonably loose and comfortable pair of trousers of soft leather, and a tunic similar in material. This, he reflected with a philosophical shrug, was nothing to complain about. However, that thing weighing him down from behind was beginning to get a little annoying...  
  
He reached around behind him to find out exactly what it was that was beginning to cause a faint ache between his shoulder blades, and he nearly exclaimed in surprise as his fingers closed around a hilt undeniably belonging to a sword.  
  
"This doesn't seem right," he would have said, had he not been knocked suddenly and soundly from his feet at just that moment.  
  
"Hey, watch it!" he snapped, instantly regretting being so rude. After all, it wasn't this mysterious person's fault that he was in an unfamiliar world with no idea what to do and where to do.  
  
"YOU watch it, Sam," a blessedly familiar voice shot back snippily.  
  
He blinked, peering more closely at the person before him, trying, as he was, to regain her footing.  
  
"Syd?!"  
  
"Right now, I'm not totally sure, but I think it's pretty safe to say," she replied ruefully.  
  
"But...but...how did you GET here?"  
  
"Same way you did, you idiot. I only landed about twenty feet down the road from you. So, what happened, anyway?"  
  
"I don't know, but I'm thinkin' virus," Sam sighed gloomily. "I mean, weird beam of blue light, weird side-effect. That kinda screams 'virus' to me.  
  
Sydney looked decidedly disappointed.  
  
"Oh. I was hoping you'd agree with me that this is all some weird side effect of Mrs. Starkey's Banana Lasagna Surprise."  
  
Sam laughed.  
  
"No, I don't think we'd both be having the same food poisoning delusion."  
  
"Probably not. Hey, do you think there's a reason this place saw fit to steal my clothes and put me in this dress?"  
  
Sam looked, then started back in surprise.  
  
"Whoa! What the hell is THAT?"  
  
"I don't know," she pouted, glaring balefully down at the long dress of some white material, its hem already ripped and dusty, covered by the long cloak of some pale green material, its hem already having met a remarkably similar fate. "I've already tripped over it about seven times - in the last twenty feet."  
  
Sam laughed. Then he frowned.  
  
"Hey, Syd, did you have some sort of weird...stick with you when you landed?"  
  
"Um...yeah. I tripped over it, so I threw it at a squirrel."  
  
"Oh, boy," Sam muttered to himself, the situation becoming remarkably clear in an instant. "I think we'd better go back and get it. It might be important. And hey, I think I can explain what happened to us. You might not like it, but I can explain it."  
  
"Great! Start talking!"  
  
  
  
Two minutes later, back in the same place...  
  
  
  
"So, what you're trying to say is that we got sucked into your stupid video game via a Mega-Virus monster with the absolute weirdest side-effect ever?" Sydney asked, staring somewhat dazed at the ornate staff in her hand.  
  
"Yup," Sam nodded cheerfully.  
  
"And not only that, we've been...turned into the characters."  
  
"Yup."  
  
"So, you've turned into the hero. Figures," she added under her breath. "And your name is...what again?"  
  
"Rain," Sam replied instantly, frowning in slight hurt when his long-time friend burst immediately into laughter.  
  
"Rain?!" she exclaimed around gasps for air. "Rain?! What's next? Cloud? Squall? Rain! That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard!"  
  
Sam scowled.  
  
"You wanna hear YOUR name?"  
  
"Sure," she replied uncertainly.  
  
"As of now, you are Princess Yuluku, who goes by the false name of Pointy."  
  
"Pointy," she repeated, accepting this rather sanguinely. "Okay! So, now that we know that these characters were born to really cruel parents, what do we do? Where do you think everyone else will be?"  
  
Sam shrugged.  
  
"Uh...well, I found you by following the plot...sort of. Maybe we should just...play along?"  
  
"What a great idea," she sighed, rubbing her forehead wearily. "Is there anything else we should know about these characters?"  
  
"Well, I'm a dashing swordsman, whose skill is legendary, as is his reputation for being a bit of a badass."  
  
"So, you're the 'bad-boy of the game.'"  
  
"No, that would be the villain," he corrected immediately. "Seikujiroth."  
  
"These names just get stupider and stupider. I wonder who gets to be the villain, anyway," Sydney mused.  
  
A moment of silence as both pondered this. A bird chirped overhead. Then...  
  
"Malcolm," they said in unison.  
  
"And as for you," Sam continued, "Princess Yuluku, or Pointy, as she is more often called, is a somewhat naïve girl who has the ability to summon powerful mythical creatures."  
  
"Okay...does that have anything to do with this stick?" she asked, waving the ornately carved staff at him.  
  
"Yeah; it's your summoner's staff."  
  
"Wonderful. Anything else I should know?"  
  
"Yeah," he replied easily. "Later on, after we meet up with everyone else, you ask Tiffie to teach you to be a master ninja-thief like her."  
  
"Um...okay," she frowned. "So, she had cruel parents, too."  
  
"Oh, and you get kidnapped by the villain."  
  
"Oh! Great!" she exclaimed with sarcastic enthusiasm, glaring at her friend's unconcerned expression.  
  
"Hey, don't worry. If we're right, it's just Malcolm. You could probably beat him just by hitting him with that thing," he snickered, pointing to her staff.  
  
"Or with this," she snickered back, stooping to pick a blade of grass off of her skirt. Then she sighed. "I hope you know what you're doing, Sam."  
  
"Yeah, me, too," Sam agreed cheerfully, tripping over a rock and sprawling painfully over the ground.  
  
"We're doomed," both teens whimpered painfully as they started off through the warm, mild spring afternoon of this completely unfamiliar world. 


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3  
  
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"Damn," Tanker sighed to himself, taking another swig of the tankard of ale he found in front of him on the heavy wooden table he was seated at, and wondering not for the first time why on earth he was garbed in a heavy suit of armour. "Where is everybody? Hell, come to think of it, where is ME?"  
  
"That would be 'where am I,' Ed," a remarkably pretty blonde girl in a loose, ruffled white blouse and a full blue velvet skirt just the colour of her eyes giggled as she dropped into the chair next to him.  
  
Tanker stared incredulously at her.  
  
"Jennifer?" he croaked uncertainly.  
  
The girl stared strangely at him.  
  
"You okay, Ed?"  
  
"Uh...sure," Tanker said lamely, uncertain of whether he wanted to laugh or cry. "So...remind me again. Who are you?"  
  
She rolled her eyes, in that action resembling Jennifer more than ever.  
  
"Garneiko, you idiot. Your best friend's only had a crush on me, like, forever."  
  
Tanker nodded, knowing beyond the shadow of a doubt that the name sounded familiar, but uncertain as to why.  
  
"Right. So...remind me again. Who is he?"  
  
"Who is your best friend of years? Gods, doesn't T'arlynath require that their knights have ANY brains?"  
  
"Knight," he mused, nodding. "At least the armour makes sense now." Then he blinked, realization suddenly hitting him. Of course, the name 'Garneiko' sounded familiar! She was the healer from Ultimate Whimsy XII! Suddenly, being referred to as 'Ed' made sense! He was The Flaming Ed, Sir Edward, greatest knight in all of the kingdom of T'arlynath! "Oh, shit on a stick," he breathed. Then he motioned over another serving girl, suddenly recalling that, at this point, Garneiko was already off duty. When a girl approach the table and requested his order, he pointed to his tankard, recently emptied. "Can I get another one of these? I have a feeling I'll need it before long."  
  
"Sure," the caramel-haired girl chirped, bustling off.  
  
"You okay?" Garneiko asked, frowning at the knight.  
  
"Yeah, great," Tanker replied too brightly.  
  
Garneiko frowned.  
  
"Well, if you're sure. I've got to pick up my money for the day, so I'll see you in a minute. If Rain comes in tell him not to go anywhere."  
  
"Sure," Tanker agreed, smiling gratefully at the serving girl who was currently placing a large mug of something amber-coloured and foamy in front of him.  
  
Letting out a shaky breath, the quarterback-turned-knight lifted the tankard and downed much of it in one gulp.  
  
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"I think this is the tavern," Sam called over his shoulder to Sydney, who was still struggling with the yards of green and white material impeding her progress forward.  
  
"Great," she said fervently, and immediately after, tripped over the hemline of her dress and pitched forward to the ground. "Ow..."  
  
Sam held back a laugh with great difficulty as he peeled her from the ground and led her into the small brown building in front of which hung a sign reading, 'The Rabbit and Turtle.'  
  
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From his vantage point behind a pickle cart, Malcolm laughed derisively to himself, although loudly enough to draw odd looks from everyone around him.  
  
"Well! I must say, Sam looks even stupider than I do."  
  
"I don't know," a nearby voice began slowly. "You look pretty stupid, after all."  
  
He turned to glare at the source of the voice, a rather more than stout woman of horrifying familiarity.  
  
"Mrs. Starkey?!" he exclaimed, horrified.  
  
The mysterious figure frowned, tugging at the sleeves of her steel-studded leather jacket.  
  
"Who?"  
  
"Er, sorry," he said sheepishly, realizing his mistake as the situation came back to him. Any resemblance to Mrs. Starkey was purely coincidental...wasn't it? This was simply the hired thug he, Seikujiroth, had, predictably, hired to take out Rain and his cronies. Although, he was fairly certain that the thug had been a man when he played the game... "You looked like someone else. Adelbarret, right?"  
  
She rolled her eyes.  
  
"You hired me, kid. You should know. So, are we agreed on my fee?"  
  
"Which is?"  
  
"Five hundred gold pieces. In advance."  
  
"Five hundred?!" he sputtered. "What the hell did I hire you to do?"  
  
"Hey, for kidnapping the princess of T'arlynath, I'd say five hundred's pretty good," she said defensively. "Now, can we stand up? My legs are beginning to cramp. Why the hell are you hiding behind a pickle-cart, anyway?"  
  
"I don't know," he pouted. "The bush has been done, and the horses I tried to hide behind kept moving away."  
  
"Whatever you say," Adelbarret sighed. "Now. Let's dance."  
  
With that, she leapt from behind the pickle cart, her weapon brandished.  
  
"Wonderful," Malcolm sighed. "I'll bet she doesn't manage it. Not that I care especially. I don't want to have Sydney around making me miserable. Hmph! Some 'beautiful princess'!"  
  
With this, he hurried down the street, away from the tavern. After all, he wanted to be far away when the carnage unfolded and suspects were taken.  
  
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"Sam!"  
  
The young man glanced up abruptly as the familiar voice hissed his name.  
  
"Tanker?!" he hissed back in surprise and delight, dropping into the chair next to the taller boy.  
  
"Yeah," Tanker sighed, his morose expression shifting to one of fond amusement as his gaze lit on the girl seating herself next to Sam. "Hi, Syd. So, you're stuck being the princess?"  
  
"Yes," she muttered resentfully, glaring down at her trailing skirts. "Stupid dress."  
  
"Aw, it looks cute," Sam grinned.  
  
Tanker nodded emphatically, his fond smile only growing when she shot them both loathing death-glares.  
  
"So, do you two know what the hell's going on?" he asked, leaning in closer to his friends.  
  
"Virus, we figure," Sam murmured back.  
  
"Of course," Tanker sighed, rolling his eyes. "Is North Valley some kind of big virus hot-spot or something?"  
  
"Well, alien attacks have Lake Okobogee," Sam noted thoughtfully.  
  
"You've got to stop watching The X-Files," Sydney told him, patting him gently on the shoulder.  
  
"Hey, at least I don't have a crush on the big bald guy," Sam shot back smugly.  
  
"His name is Assistant Director Walter Skinner," she began through gritted teeth, "and it's just a passing interest."  
  
"Sure it is," Sam agreed mildly. "Hey, Tank, you might wanna think about shaving your head."  
  
Tanker shrugged.  
  
"It'd get rid of helmet-hair."  
  
"And everything else hair," Sam snickered. "Anyway, back onto the situation."  
  
"Why does he always do that?" Sydney asked Tanker in a whisper.  
  
"Why does he always do what?" Tanker asked, frowning.  
  
"Get the plot moving again. It hardly seems fair that he always gets to be the logical, down-to-business guy, when we ALL know what a lie that is."  
  
Sam glared at her.  
  
"Well, obviously no one else's gonna do it, so I have to, or we'll just drift along in these meandering conversations forever! So. What was I saying again?"  
  
"At least, we'll have meandering conversations if Mr. Attention Span can remember what they were from one second to the next," Sydney murmured, smirking.  
  
"Shut up!" Sam commanded. "I just remembered."  
  
"Congratulations," Tanker grinned.  
  
"Hey! Do you mind? Anyway, we were talking about the situation. Yeah. I don't know if you've figured it out, Tanker, but we've been sucked into Ultimate Whimsy XII."  
  
"Yeah, I know. I'm the Flaming Ed, right?"  
  
"I guess so," Sam shrugged. "And Syd's Yuluku. How appropriate."  
  
Tanker frowned.  
  
"Why's that?"  
  
"Well...I read ahead in the strategy guide," Sam admitted sheepishly. "There's a bit of a romantic subplot between them."  
  
"Oh," the two other teens commented together, each blushing slightly.  
  
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Meanwhile, on the other side of the tavern, Garneiko's expression, an angry glare at the dark-haired young woman, relaxed into her more customary bright smile. With the way Ed was blushing at her, she, Garneiko, had nothing to worry about. Although she still didn't approve of Rain's apparent habit of picking up strange girls on the street, if he was only picking them up for the benefit of his friends, that made it a little better.  
  
Decisively, she started over to the table that the three were occupying.  
  
"Hello, Rain," she purred as she sat down across from him.  
  
"Uh...hi...Jennifer?" Sam choked nervously.  
  
Garneiko rolled her eyes.  
  
"Who is this Jennifer girl?"  
  
"Um...she's..." Sam floundered helplessly, recalling seconds too late that the lovely tavern girl, Garneiko, was remarkably possessive of Rain. "No one. No one at all."  
  
"Apparently a no one who looks a lot like me," Garneiko shrugged before turning to Sydney. "So, honey, what's your name?"  
  
"Um...I'm...er..."  
  
"Pointy," Sam interjected.  
  
Garneiko stared at him in bewilderment.  
  
"Pointy?" she repeated. "What kind of a name is that?"  
  
"Hey, my grandmother named me!" Sydney told her defensively, at last getting into this whole business of acting, despite Sam's frantic gestures not to mess with the script of the game. "It was her dying wish."  
  
"Oh! I'm sorry," Garneiko murmured. 'She looks familiar...'  
  
"Well, hi, there!" the tavern-girl who had earlier brought Tanker his much- needed beer greeted Sydney brightly. "Can I get you anything?"  
  
Sydney thought carefully.  
  
"Um...do you have chocolate milk?"  
  
The tavern-girl raised one eyebrow.  
  
"Er, no."  
  
"Normal milk?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Soda?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Juice?"  
  
"No."  
  
Sydney sighed.  
  
"Well, in that case, what DO you have?"  
  
"Beer," the other young woman replied immediately.  
  
A pause.  
  
"Okay, I'll have that."  
  
"You sure?" Tanker murmured to her. "Remember your fabled low alcohol tolerance."  
  
"Shut up!"  
  
"I'm serious! You're the only person I've ever seen who gets tipsy from the communion wine."  
  
"You said we'd never talk about that again!"  
  
"They only let you have a sip! I'd hate to see you drink a whole glass."  
  
"Hey!"  
  
Garneiko leaned closer to Sam.  
  
"What are they talking about? Do they know each other?"  
  
"They must be old friends or something," he replied, shooting his friends a surreptitious glare at this blatant breaking of character. How on earth would they stay undetected for an entire game if these two kept saying things to give them away? "Tanker! Sydney!" he barked. "Stay in character!"  
  
At these fatal words, the entire tavern fell silent, and every head within it, attached to a body or not, swivelled to stare at Sam, who coloured and tried to shrink down inside his leather tunic.  
  
"Oh, good going," Tanker snorted.  
  
Sam sighed, rubbing his eyes wearily.  
  
"I think we'd better just get out of here."  
  
"And go where, exactly?" Garneiko demanded suspiciously.  
  
"Well, I was going to head over to Meillo, which is a really crazy coincidence, because Pointy was telling me earlier that she had to go over there, too! Weren't you, Pointy?" he asked brightly, kicking Sydney underneath the table.  
  
"Ow!" she yelped. "Uh...I mean, oh, yes! Yes, I was. That whole mess with...um..."  
  
"Weren't you saying that you wanted to go ask your old teacher about a problem with your mother?"  
  
"Yes! Of course! He should know. He's known my mother a lot longer than I have, after all," Sydney laughed, rubbing the back of her head nervously.  
  
"Yeah," Sam agreed. Then he turned to Tanker. "So, Ed, are you coming with us?"  
  
Tanker didn't respond, engrossed as he was in watching the enticingly swaying hips of a girl across the tavern.  
  
"Ed?" Sam called again, suppressing a laugh.  
  
"Ed!" Sydney barked, showing absolutely no signs of amusement.  
  
Tanker looked at them, blinking.  
  
"What?"  
  
"We're going to Meillo," Sam told him, pushing out his chair and standing.  
  
"But I haven't finished my beer yet," Tanker whimpered.  
  
"Deal with it," Sydney suggested through gritted teeth, very aware that his gaze still hadn't left the plunging neckline of that same girl across the tavern, who now seemed to be winking at him.  
  
"I'll see you later, Garneiko," Sam told the young blonde as he followed his now-bickering lifelong friends from the tavern.  
  
"You'd better," she called after him cheerfully. "If you don't, I'll find you and kill you!"  
  
Then she sighed.  
  
"He's so dreamy!"  
  
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"Ha-HA!" Adelbarret was meanwhile cackling with delight from her vantage point up a tree a league from T'arlynath. "What a brilliant place to hide! Now those kids are sure to wander right into my trap! Uh...at least, I hope. They WERE supposed to come out of that tavern, but they cleverly eluded me, taking the back door instead of the front. Damn them...but at last, they will fall into my clutches, and I can get the rest of my pay at last! Unless they took a different forest... I know Seikujiroth said they'd be coming this way, but just between you and me," she confided to the squirrel sitting next to her on the branch, coincidentally the one who had earlier sustained injury from having a summoner's staff thrown at him, although neither Adelbarret nor Sydney ever had any way of knowing that, "I think the guy's a little half-baked."  
  
The squirrel said nothing, being a squirrel.  
  
"Yeah, I think so, too," Adelbarret laughed, slapping the squirrel heartily on the back.  
  
"Eek!" the squirrel would have said as it flew from the tree, if squirrels had the ability to make such noises.  
  
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"Come on, you guys! Just one traveling song, and then I'll leave you alone?" Sam pleaded, his eyes wide and hopeful.  
  
Tanker sighed as the three trudged along the well-worn path through the forest that covered most of the route from T'arlynath to Meillo.  
  
"For the last time, Sam, we're NOT singing 'John Jacob Jinkleheimer Schmidt' with you!"  
  
"Eek!" a small, furry comet did not shriek as it flew overhead.  
  
Its flying overhead, however, caught the attention of Sydney, who was getting tired of listening to her two traveling companions arguing about travel songs, and was desperate for something to distract her.  
  
"What was that?"  
  
Sam glanced up.  
  
"Uh...a flying squirrel?"  
  
Sydney frowned.  
  
"Squirrels can fly here?"  
  
"Oh, yeah. There's all sorts of weird crap in this forest," Sam told her easily. "Scary killer flowers that can darken you and crush your bones in their vines, rabid goats and weasels, squirrels..."  
  
"Assassins?" a voice overhead suggested.  
  
"Yeah, and assassins," Sam agreed absently as he culled his brains for other examples. Then, as the words floating down from the branch hit him, he stopped short. "Hey, Tanker," he called in a hushed tone.  
  
"Yeah, Sam?"  
  
"That tree just reminded me. Don't we meet up with an assassin in these woods at some point before we hit Meillo?"  
  
Tanker's eyes grew wide with horror.  
  
"Damn, Sammy, you're right!"  
  
"Uh...guys?" the voice prompted, sighing in dismay as Sydney joined in the panic.  
  
"Oh, no! An assassin?! This is terrible! It could happen at any moment!"  
  
"Yeah, like right now!" the voice from the branch agreed, by now rather annoyed.  
  
Sadly, it was again ignored.  
  
"And we'll have no warning! It's just going to be an attack out of the blue!" Sam groaned. "Everyone be really careful. Especially you, Syd. It's Yuluku they're after."  
  
Tanker growled.  
  
"Anyone goes near her, I'll rip his guts out through his nose."  
  
"Hey! Guys!" the voice from the tree overhead called as the trio passed beneath the branch, neither heeding the words nor halting at them.  
  
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Adelbarret rolled her eyes, heaving a long sigh.  
  
"Dumb kids."  
  
With that, she leapt down from the branch, drawing a large machine gun from hammerspace.  
  
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Sam, Tanker, and Sydney whirled about at the sound of a thump echoing through the woods behind them.  
  
"Who are you?" Sam demanded, drawing his sword.  
  
"I am Adelbarret," the large woman clad in an armless leather jacket, studded with steel, and similarly studded leather pants, with one arm covered from shoulder to elbow with an intricate tattoo of...twisty things. "Learn that name well, because I have the oddest feeling that our paths shall cross again. I don't know why," she continued in a mutter, "because I'm planning to kill you and all. Oh, except for the little princess, there."  
  
"Hey, don't call me that!" Tanker exclaimed.  
  
"I think he meant Pointy," Sam muttered, choking back a laugh.  
  
"Oh, yeah. I guess that makes sense," Tanker said thoughtfully.  
  
"She looks familiar, doesn't she?" Sydney murmured to Tanker.  
  
"No, not really," Tanker replied, frowning. "In fact, I'm a little fuzzy on who you are."  
  
"I'm your girlfriend, idiot," she said, quite annoyed.  
  
"Really?" Tanker grinned, stepping back and looking her up and down appreciatively. "My girlfriend's hot!"  
  
"Aw...that's sweet," she said, eyes growing shiny. "But seriously, she looks familiar!"  
  
"Yeah, I was just thinking that," Sam commented, scratching his chin. "But I can't quite place her..."  
  
"I don't know..." Tanker frowned.  
  
"The buckey thing sounds familiar, doesn't it?" Sydney noted.  
  
"Well, my mom calls me bucko sometimes," Tanker mused.  
  
"Uh...that doesn't really help us," Sam informed him gently. Then he looked up at Adelbarret. "What do you want?"  
  
"I've been charged with the task of bringing Princess Yuluku back with me."  
  
"On whose orders?" Sam demanded, reflecting that going along with the dialogue of the game kind of sucked. Frankly put, he could have pulled better dialogue out of his...er, nose.  
  
"That isn't for you to know, little boy," Adelbarret laughed. "Now, Princess, shall we?"  
  
"Not a chance!" Tanker snarled, putting up an arm to protect her.  
  
"Ow!" she shrieked as Tanker's protective arm slammed into her nose.  
  
Adelbarret glared at them.  
  
"Okay...if you don't want to do this the easy way, we can do this...the hurty way!"  
  
With that, she lunged forward, brandishing her gun and drawing a ladle from an oddly shaped scabbard on her belt.  
  
"Oh! Mrs. Starkey!" Sydney exclaimed delightedly. "THAT'S who she reminds me of!"  
  
"Hey, yeah," Tanker agreed.  
  
Adelbarret came to a halt.  
  
"Uh...who?"  
  
"Never mind," Tanker replied hastily.  
  
Adelbarret shrugged.  
  
"Whatever you say, kid. Now, let's go! You win, you get to keep the princess. I win, you get to die."  
  
"Not much of a runner-up, is it?" Sam grumbled.  
  
"Then we'd better win, man," Tanker said through gritted teeth, trying to be heroic as he drew his sword, but just sounding rather foolish.  
  
"What can I do?" Sydney asked eagerly.  
  
Sam and Tanker looked from her eager expression to her staff, nearly useless for the time being, to each other, rather pained.  
  
"You're on lookout, Syd," Sam told her, gently guiding her over to a tree. "Go on up and tell us if anyone's coming."  
  
"You're trying to get rid of me, aren't you?" she asked, glaring at him.  
  
"No, no, of course not!" Sam assured her.  
  
"Oh. Okay!" she chirped, hiking up her skirts high enough to make Sam, Tanker, the various and sundry forest creatures scampering about, and Adelbarret stare in varying degrees of delight and converse consternation.  
  
Then, as she disappeared up the tree, Sam, Tanker, and Adelbarret assumed defensive stances, and the forest creatures went about their business. Suddenly, Sam looked up with a frown.  
  
"Hey, where's that music coming from?" he demanded as a rather ominous sort of guitar song started up.  
  
"I think it's the boss theme!" Tanker replied.  
  
"She's a boss?! Uh-oh! Full-life! Full-life!"  
  
"Rain, we don't have Full-Life, or even Life. We don't even have a Phoenix Down!"  
  
"AND Tanker's being the rational one?! Apocalypse is nigh!" Sydney exclaimed from her tree-branch.  
  
"Hey!" Tanker exclaimed, outraged. Then he turned to Sam. "Honestly, though, Sammy, I don't think we have to worry. I mean, she's got a LADLE!"  
  
"I only use my ladle when my gun doesn't finish the job," she growled. "Be warned, boys, this is no ordinary ladle."  
  
"I'm not a boy," Sydney called from the tree.  
  
"You shut up! You're hiding, so you're not allowed to participate in the witty dialogue."  
  
"That isn't just because I'm hiding," the younger woman sniffed contemptuously, somewhat hurt.  
  
"Anyway, as I was saying, be warned, buckeys. I have learned the art of wielding a ladle from the finest warriors in the land. The true iron chefs."  
  
"Do you know Emeril?!" Sydney shouted down from the tree. "Can you get me his autograph?"  
  
"KNOW him?" Adelbarret repeated, quite aghast. "He was my tenth husband! Bam, indeed!"  
  
"Argh! My eyes! They burn with the terror of the mental image!" the tree howled. Or rather, the girl in the tree.  
  
"Hey, Syd, no offence, but could you pipe down so we can finish the battle?"  
  
"Maybe if you START the battle, Mr. Bossy!"  
  
"Listen to the girl, buckey. Bring it," Adelbarret snarled.  
  
"Bring what?" Tanker asked, scratching his head.  
  
"Never mind," Sam sighed, rather glad that balance had been restored and Tanker was once again the idiot.  
  
With that, he leapt forward and swung his sword at the large woman, who went down immediately.  
  
"Agh!" she grunted as she hit the earth solidly. "Gotta hand it to you, kid. You won fairly. Now," she continued, glaring up at him, "finish the job."  
  
Sam shook his head, putting his sword away.  
  
"No way, man. Er, I mean, ma'am. I can't do it."  
  
"Look, kid, you won the fight! You showed me up! You let me live, I'm in your eternal debt!"  
  
Sam shrugged and looked at Tanker.  
  
"Sounds pretty cool to me!"  
  
"You can come down now, Syd!" Tanker hollered up the tree.  
  
"What?" she called back. "It's over already?! I suppose those six hours of levelling up really WERE worth it!"  
  
"No kidding," Sam grinned. "Now Adelbarret here is eternally in our debt!"  
  
"I wish I were dead," she grumbled, climbing to her feet and brushing the dirt and pine needles off her jacket.  
  
"Hey, we're not such a bad crew," Sam chuckled before glancing around. "Hey, Syd - er, Pointy?"  
  
"Yeah?" a mournful voice called back.  
  
"You coming down?"  
  
"W-well, I'm kinda...stuck," she replied sheepishly. "Every time I try to move, my skirt rips!"  
  
"I'll come up and save you, Pointy!" Tanker called immediately, starting up the tree.  
  
"Oh, brother," Adelbarret sighed.  
  
"Cute, aren't they?" Sam grinned. "I'm Rain, by the way. The big guy's Ed - The Flaming Ed - and you already know Pointy."  
  
"Pointy?!" Adelbarret repeated incredulously.  
  
"Yeah," Sam shrugged. "Good a nickname as any. So, since you're travelling with us, how about telling us who was after Pointy?"  
  
"Shouldn't we wait for them?" Adelbarret suggested, gesturing toward the tree.  
  
As if on cue, the sound of cracking wood rent the air, and the next moment, two very startled young people lay on the ground, very startled female atop very happy male, amid scraps of broken wood.  
  
"I really wish I was dead," Adelbarret groaned.  
  
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End Notes: Hi! 


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4  
  
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Malcolm rolled his eyes with an annoyed sigh as he peered into the little stone well at the image on the surface of the water of Adelbarret trudging through the forest with Sam, Tanker, and Sydney.  
  
"Great. She screwed up. And switched sides. Big surprise. She's a bigger loser than Kilokhan. Hmph...I wonder if Kilokhan's...no, why would he be here?"  
  
Pushing away from the well, he wandered back into the large abandoned stone building, formerly the home of a wealthy noble, that he had claimed for his evil villain hideout.  
  
"Well, now what do I do?" he sighed. "If we don't follow the game, we don't get home. What did Seikujiroth do after Adelbarret joined the heroes?"  
  
He pondered this for a moment, tugging absently at the sleeve of the odd red tunic, decorated with swirls of black, that he had found himself wearing.  
  
"Oh, right! He flew into a rage at being betrayed, and vowed to kill Adelbarret along with Rain and Sir Edward. Well, here I go."  
  
With that, Malcolm let out an angry bellow and charged at the small oak table near the cold, grey stone wall of the large, drafty room, on which sat a sword and a small sack of coins.  
  
"Ow!" he whimpered, rubbing his arm as he bounced back off the table, which, infuriatingly, stood.  
  
Glaring at the unoffending furniture, he reared back and tried again.  
  
"Ow!" he barked, delivering a good, solid, and totally ineffective kick to the table leg. "Argh! Damn table!"  
  
"Seikujiroth, my lord! Are you quite alright?" a young man clad in a black hooded robe with a sword hanging at his side who had earlier given his name as Gleann and expressed a good deal of surprise at Malcolm's not recognizing him, asked, hurrying into the room.  
  
"I'm fine," Malcolm grumbled, carefully keeping his weight off his right foot. "The table's just damn heavy."  
  
"This table?" Gleann asked, confused, picking it up easily in one hand.  
  
"Yes, that table," Malcolm replied, glaring stonily at the other man.  
  
"Might I ask why you were attempting to move the table?"  
  
"I was flying into a rage," he informed Gleann, crossing his arms airily. "It was supposed to fall over and scatter the contents all over the floor in an artistically chaotic scene, the harsh disorganization of which was supposed to contrast with my calm, collected manner up until this point."  
  
"I...see," Gleann said slowly. "Might I ask, my lord, why?"  
  
"Adelbarret, the mercenary I hired to kidnap the princess Yuluku of T'arlynath, has betrayed me and joined their side."  
  
Gleann's eyes grew wide, and his jaw set angrily.  
  
"No man must be allowed to betray my lord Seikujiroth and live!"  
  
"Very true. Of course, she's not a man, per se, but that's beside the point," Malcolm agreed snippily. "Which is why I'm going to kill her."  
  
A gleam flashed into Gleann's oddly red eyes.  
  
"I pray, Seikujiroth, allow me to deal with this traitor!"  
  
"Sure," Malcolm shrugged. "I'm too busy to do it myself, anyway. Oh, and bring back the princess."  
  
"Why do you want the princess?" another cloaked young man, Wallace, asked, grinning. "She cute or something?"  
  
"No," Malcolm replied haughtily. "She is simply the key to my scheme the domination of the entire world."  
  
"Say again?" Wallace frowned, exchanging confused looks with Gleann.  
  
"Never mind! Just...come with me."  
  
Shaking his head grimly at the stupidity of his minions, he shoved open the heavy wooden back door of the manor and led the two young men out to the well. He peered into it, keeping exactly what he wished to see clearly in mind. Seconds later, an image of a swordsman, a knight, a large man in steel-studded leather, and a girl in a green cloak, all walking through a forest, began to form on the clear surface of the water, first mistily, then sharpening and coming into focus.  
  
"See?" he said to the other men leaning over the well, his eyes trained on the image. "That's the princess."  
  
"Uh...which one?" Gleann wanted to know.  
  
Malcolm looked up and glared at him.  
  
"Which one do you think? The girl, for crying out loud!"  
  
Gleann looked down sheepishly.  
  
"I didn't know," he muttered. "I thought she might have been in disguise, or something."  
  
"Well, she's not. She's the one in green, just in case you needed clarification on which one is the girl."  
  
"Heh-heh...she IS cute," Wallace noted appreciatively. "I bet that's really why you want her!"  
  
"Oh, shut up!"  
  
"Y'know, boss," Wallace began, leaning casually against the stone well, "you could be a little nicer to us."  
  
"I'm a villain!" Malcolm exclaimed. "The whole point of going into the villain business is so you DON'T have to be nice!"  
  
"You mean, you've ALWAYS been like this?" Gleann asked, one eyebrow lifting.  
  
"No, not quite," Malcolm sighed, a bitterly humiliating memory that, oddly enough, he hadn't lived through, washing over him...  
  
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Meanwhile, Tanker, Sydney, and Adelbarret were all gritting their teeth at the rather ridiculously cheerful song bursting from the lips of the fourth member of their quartet.  
  
"Will you shut up?!" Tanker exclaimed.  
  
Sam regarded him coolly.  
  
"If none of you will sing with me, or talk to me, or let me talk to you, I just have to amuse myself."  
  
"Adelbarret," Sydney began pleadingly, "could you PLEASE tell us about your past?"  
  
"Forget it, buckey!" Adelbarret exclaimed. "It's not fit for a lady's ears! Except maybe mine..."  
  
"Well, then," Tanker began, thinking very hard and injuring himself quite badly in the process. "Why don't you tell us what you know about why someone wanted to kidnap Yuluku?"  
  
"Maybe later," Adelbarret replied flatly.  
  
"If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands!" Sam sang merrily, bouncing along the path, utterly oblivious to the conversation going on behind him.  
  
"Or maybe now," Adelbarret corrected, grimacing in pain as she pressed her hands over her ears. "Alright; let's move off the road. You never know when the wrong person might pass by and hear something they shouldn't."  
  
"Well...couldn't we just kill them?" Tanker asked, tilting his head to the side with slight difficulty and several clanking sounds of his metal-clad head against his metal-clad shoulder.  
  
"Yeah!" Sam added. "And then we could steal their money!"  
  
Adelbarret blinked as she contemplated this, and then she burst into hearty laughter, clapping each on the shoulder.  
  
"I'm startin' to like you boys!"  
  
"Look, can we just find somewhere to sit and talk?" Sydney asked, fiddling impatiently with her staff.  
  
"Sure thing, girl," Adelbarret chuckled, moving off the path. Then she turned back. "And when we get to Meillo, we've got to get you a better weapon. Or some fighting skills. Or something."  
  
"Hey, she can hit things with her stick," Sam pointed out, snickering and then wincing as the aforementioned stick connected painfully with the side of his head. At least, this was the intention...  
  
"Don't say it like it's a bad thing!" Sydney barked before storming into the woods after Adelbarret.  
  
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"Wow, what a walk," Sam sighed as he dropped, exhausted, to a log in the middle of the clearing. "I don't know how we made it, what with all the epic battles we had to fight to get here."  
  
"I hear you, buddy," Tanker agreed with an emphatic nod. "I thought we were toast for sure in that last one!"  
  
"Oh, yeah," Sam shuddered. Then he grinned. "But remember all the blood and guts everywhere when it finally died?"  
  
"Boy, do I!" Adelbarret cackled wickedly.  
  
"Truly a battle for the ages!" Sydney added. "A victory worthy of song! Now, let us never speak of it again."  
  
"Cool," Sam and Tanker said in unison.  
  
"Cool, buckey," said Adelbarret.  
  
"Now," Sam began, looking up at the large leather-clad woman, "why don't you tell us who was after Pointy?"  
  
Adelbarret sighed.  
  
"Hate to tell you, kid, but I don't know a lot about the guy, other than he paid good, but looked like a pansy."  
  
"Pansy," Tanker repeated slowly. Then he looked up at Sam suddenly, a horrified sort of realization dawning on him. "Do you think that could be..."  
  
"No," Sam replied too hastily. "Whatever else may be wrong with him, Ed, he isn't capable of this."  
  
"What's the guy's name, Adelbarret?" Sydney asked.  
  
"Seikujiroth, if I remember right," the older woman replied. "Stupid name, if you ask me."  
  
Sam groaned in despair. Tanker drew in a deep breath and expelled it slowly.  
  
"Hoo, boy..."  
  
Adelbarret frowned.  
  
"What, you boys know him?"  
  
"Yeah," Sam sighed, throwing all the dramatic flair he could into the story. Now, if he could just manage to remember the whole story - or make up what he couldn't... "We used to be good friends. He would meet us every Friday at the pub for a beer. I don't know what happened. I think it was a girl; it usually is..."  
  
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[Warning: Flashback sequence now in effect. Please make sure your tray table is up, and your seat is in the fully upright position. Do not expose to direct sunlight. Not recommended for those with stomach, liver, or nasal problems.]  
  
Rain and Ed laughed uproariously as the redheaded youth seated across the table from them kept jerking oddly back and forth in effort to keep the large spoon balanced on his bulbous nose from clattering to the floor.  
  
"Hey, guys, why do you come in here every Friday if you're just going to act like idiots?" Garneiko sighed. "Someone's going to make a mess, and then I'll have to clean it up!"  
  
"Call me crazy," the redhead began slowly, forgetting to jerk about and wincing along with the rest of the tavern as the spoon clattered first to the table, and then to the floor, "but isn't that what they pay you for?"  
  
"Oh, shut up, Willy," the blonde shot back, glaring.  
  
"Hey, hey, simmer down, cutie," he chuckled. "I was just havin' a laugh."  
  
"Well, don't!"  
  
"Hmm," Rain commented aside to Ed, pointedly ignoring the less-than-clever- but-still-fully-qualifying banter between the two, and opting as he did so to utter the magical phrase that would set the stopped-still plot into motion once more, "I wonder where Seikujiroth is."  
  
Ed frowned.  
  
"Didn't he say he was gonna be late?"  
  
"Oh, right. He wanted to invoke the Overlord of Chaos, right?"  
  
"No, man," Ed corrected. "It was the Overlord of Despair. And he wasn't invoking it himself. He was going to call upon it to possess a bunny rabbit."  
  
"Oh, right," Rain laughed. "Man, what a nutty guy!  
  
As though on cue, the doors of the tavern slammed open and a gust of wind set the torches hanging about the room flickering most creepily.  
  
"Atmospheric," Willy noted, never to speak again until the next time he did.  
  
All eyes were trained on the dark, ominous figure at the door, swathed in a long black coat that swept grandly about him in the wind.  
  
"Oh, hey, Seikujiroth!" Rain called, waving frantically as he recognized this newcomer. "C'mon over! We saved you a seat!"  
  
"Oh, God," Garneiko was meanwhile muttering aside to Ed. "That creepy guy's here. I don't like him. He keeps asking me out! And everyone KNOWS I've totally got the hots for Rain! Mrowr...what a hunk..."  
  
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"She did NOT say that," Sydney broke in flatly.  
  
"Hey, how do you know, Pointy?" Sam demanded angrily. "Were you there?"  
  
"Well-"  
  
"Exactly! Who's telling this story, you or me?"  
  
"You, although it would probably be more accurate if I did. Even taking into account the fact that I wasn't there."  
  
Adelbarret chuckled.  
  
"Yeah, probably, buckey. Ah, well, keep on with your tale, kiddo."  
  
"Right," Sam nodded. "So, anyway, Garneiko leaves, and Ed, Willy, and I decided to have a little fun..."  
  
"Oh, God," Sydney muttered aside.  
  
"Hey, quiet, Pointy!" Sam admonished.  
  
"Fine, go on," Sydney invited mildly. "I'm sure your tale of heartless teenage boy pranks is fascinating."  
  
"Sure it is! So, anyway, Seikujiroth comes over, and we tell him that a girl's been winkin' at him. He asks which one, and we tell him that he'll have to guess. We were just teasing, and we didn't really expect him to do anything about it! But he gets up, goes over to Garneiko, and asks her out! We couldn't believe it! The whole place was watching, and she turned him down flat!"  
  
"Yeah. Sounds like a real yuk," Adelbarret commented flatly, exchanging disgusted glances with Sydney.  
  
Sam, however, was oblivious.  
  
"It was, man! It was hilarious! So then he gets really mad, and his eyes start glowing."  
  
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Rage welling up within his soul, Seikujiroth felt its strength - the dark, inhuman strength of origins best not meddled with - flowing through his veins. The remaining chill from his trek through the storm vanished, as did the remaining shreds of sanity, along with goodness and virtue, from his mind.  
  
Yes, in that moment, Seikujiroth found his destiny.  
  
Turning eerily glowing eyes upon the startled, frightened denizens of the tavern, he began to speak in a low, ominously calm voice.  
  
"That, my friends, was MEAN!" he finished in a shriek. "MEAN, MEAN, MEAN! YOU'RE ALL BIG MEANIES! THE MEANEST MEANIES EVER! I hate you all, and I hope you all die! Well, you'll see. With the aid of Kiroshagn, the Overlord of Chaos-"  
  
"Hah! Told you," Rain gloated aside to Ed.  
  
"Shut up, man!" Ed hissed, eyeing Seikujiroth nervously.  
  
"-I shall conquer all that is. The world will be mine, and you shall be at my mercy! Every one of you! And when at last I rule all and fulfill my ultimate purpose, my first act shall be to put to death you worthless peons who dared to insult me!"  
  
With that, Seikujiroth turned on his heel, managing to sweep his coat grandly about him for once, and stalked from the small drinking establishment.  
  
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"So, yeah. That's what happened. He totally snapped! Over a girl! But, you know, I think there must still be some good in him somewhere. Like when he said his first act as world dictator would be to put us to death. I always thought that was kind of touching that he thought of his friends first," Sam concluded, beamingly missing the point entirely.  
  
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"Er, Seikujiroth?"  
  
Malcolm glanced up sharply at the source of the hesitant question that had so effectively jolted him from his reverie.  
  
"What is it, Gleann?" he asked wearily.  
  
"Are you ill? You suddenly looked very distressed."  
  
"Yeah; like you found out that the cute girl you've been flirting with at the supermarket is married to your boss, who just found out that you're the hottie from the produce section his wife keeps talking about," Wallace added, shuddering as a memory from his own past filled his mind.  
  
The other two men stared at him oddly.  
  
"What?" he shrugged sheepishly. "That's never happened to you?"  
  
Giving his head a quick shake and deliberately ignoring Wallace, Gleann turned back to Malcolm.  
  
"What is the cause of your sudden distress, my lord?"  
  
"I was just recalling an ugly memory," the shorter young man sighed, hopping up to perch on the edge of the tabletop.  
  
"Ooh! This sounds sordid," Wallace noted, rubbing his hands together in expectant glee.  
  
"Would you care to talk of it, sir?" Gleann asked quietly.  
  
Malcolm sighed again, beginning to get into the theatrical angst that had doubtlessly already won the character of Seikujiroth absurd numbers of totally undeserved fangirls who seemed to eat that stuff up with a spoon.  
  
"I suppose you might as well know the whole of my dark history. You see, I was not always a ruthless man who relied on fear to spark loyalty in those around him. I once had a very full social life, and two especially good friends. We would meet every Friday night for a drink. Oh, if only it could have lasted! But something went wrong. Something always goes wrong..."  
  
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As Seikujiroth poured out his soul to his two most faithful lackeys, relating to them a tale much like the one that has very recently been told, but containing more explosions, more affirmation from the God of Chaos that he was indeed destined to be the world's next ruler, and a more detailed description of his hair, four people with very sober expressions sat in a very silent circle around a fire that seemed almost more subdued than an ordinary fire. As though picking up its cue from the group surrounding it, it didn't flicker and dance nearly so wildly as fires are wont to.  
  
"Wow..." Sam said, shaking his head.  
  
"Wow..." Tanker echoed.  
  
"Wow..." Sydney agreed.  
  
"Wow, buckey," Adelbarret added.  
  
Sam heaved a long sigh.  
  
"Seikujiroth! I don't believe it! How could he do something like this?!"  
  
Tanker nodded emphatically.  
  
"If only we knew what possible connection he had to T'arylnath that would prompt him to try to kidnap the princess! Some clue..."  
  
Then, as an uncomfortable silence fell over the clearing, Sam glanced sharply at Sydney and kicked her ankle gently.  
  
"Ow! Hey! What - oh, right! Um, I think I remember that name from somewhere. My mother mentioned him once. And I'm sure I saw him around. At least, I remember a dark, sinister, but oddly geeky character lurking around the last time the Duke of Rufus was visiting. I can't remember exactly why, but I think Mother said he was working as an advisor for the Duke, her brother and my uncle."  
  
"The Duke of Rufus?" Adelbarret repeated with a frown. "Why would he have one of his men plot the kidnapping of his niece?"  
  
"Hold on," Tanker began slowly. "Didn't Seikujiroth mention the Duke of Rufus at all when he hired you?"  
  
"Naw, not a word."  
  
"Maybe Rufus doesn't know about this," Sam suggested, eyes narrowing thoughtfully.  
  
"Oh, I don't know, Rain," Sydney interjected. "My uncle isn't exactly in my good books right now. I don't like what he's trying to get my mother to do."  
  
"Why? What's he trying to get your mother to do?" Adelbarret demanded.  
  
"Oh, just really stupid things. Things that he says will help the kingdom. I'm sure he knows as well as I do, though, that Daylight Savings Time and alcohol prohibition are NOT the best ways to keep on the good side of a kingdom chock full of lazy alcoholics."  
  
Rain blinked.  
  
"And...WHY does she want to keep ruling this kingdom again?"  
  
"Hey, you offer those men beer, they'll do anything for you. Even if it's really cheap beer!"  
  
"Yeah," Tanker agreed, smiling fondly at her. "Beer is good."  
  
"Is it just me," Adelbarret muttered to Rain, "or is he getting stupider?"  
  
"Anyway," Rain continued, ignoring the large woman who was by now balancing her ladle on the tip of her finger and spinning it about most impressively, "does this have something to do with why you left town, Pointy?"  
  
Sydney blinked. Rolling his eyes in exasperation, Sam gestured frantically 'yes', unseen by the other two, whose attention was by now focused on the young woman.  
  
"Uh...yeah, yeah, of course," she hastened to assure them. "I thought that maybe my old teacher, Dr. Rozenstot, might be able to help me out. He's living in Meillo, and he's one of the only people I can trust right now. You see, mother won't believe me that Uncle Rufus is up to something. Dr. Rozenstot is the only other person she'll listen to. I'm even hoping that Dr. Rozenstot might be able to find out what Uncle Rufus is up to and talk him out of it. After all, even if he's sending guys after me - "  
  
"We don't know for sure that that's him," Sam interjected.  
  
" - he's still my uncle, and I don't want to see him get hurt - unless I'm the one doing the hurting! Call ME Kiddo for twelve years, will you, you bastard? Prepare to taste the wrath of my whackin' stick!"  
  
Sam and Tanker blinked, quite startled, as she leapt to her feet and began swinging wildly at the various trees, rocks, and harmless woodland creatures in the area.  
  
"Why couldn't I have gone into herbal medicine, like Mama always wanted?" Adelbarret groaned, shaking her head in despair as a pigeon flew past her shoulder.  
  
Meanwhile, Sydney was cuddling her staff happily.  
  
"I wuv my whackin' stick..."  
  
--------------------------------------------------  
  
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End Notes: Wow! I was lying through my teeth when I said three or four parts. I'm sure no one at all familiar with the overly verbose phenomenon that is a Rhianwen work is surprised at all. ^_^; Oh, well. I hope you're still enjoying it. And, as always, if you have any comments, good or bad, please please please please PLEASE let me know! Negative feedback does not make me doubt my skill as a writer. Zero feedback for months at a time does. But keep in mind that this is not a beg. Really. At all.  
  
[Beat]  
  
Well, maybe a little.  
  
Well, bye for now!  
  
[Hands everyone a Slurpee and bounces merrily away] 


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

   "Wow! Here we are! In Meillo," Sam announced cheerfully as the group of four walked through the arch, proudly bearing at its top a sign reading, **Welcome to Meillo**.

   "Nice job stating the obvious there, kid," Adelbarret congratulated him sarcastically.

   "Thanks," he beamed back, the point once again sailing over his head and directly out the window that wasn't there, since, of course, they were all outside.

   "Your friend there is starting to rub off of you," Adelbarret said forebodingly, gesturing to Tanker.

   "Y'know what, Pointy?" Tanker began as though on cue. "I've had this feeling since we got here that this world needs something. Something really important is missing."

   "Oh, really?" Sydney said absently, nose buried in an ancient tome of wisdom that they had coincidentally found lying at the side of the road. Due to the words, "Key Item", emblazoned on the red leather front in gold, Sam had thought it best to pick it up just in case, and Sydney had wholeheartedly agreed. After all, it would probably only take her a few minutes to read it – only seven hundred pages – but at least it would take the worst edge off her book withdrawal. 

   "Yeah! And I think I know what it is!"

   "Oh, really?"

   "Yeah; football!"

   "Good," Sydney murmured absently, turning the page.

   "Alright, listen up, kids," Adelbarret began in a tone that brooked no argument. "The first thing we're gonna do is get to a shop and find the little princess something proper to fight with!"

   "But what?" Sam asked, scratching his head.

   "It doesn't matter! A clod of dirt would be more effective than a pretty little stick," the woman replied, glancing scornfully at the staff dangling limply from the girl's hand. "We'll get her a sword."

   "But...who's going to teach her how to use it?" Tanker asked, perplexed.

Adelbarret came to such an abrupt stop that Sydney walked directly into her.

   "Oof!" she squeaked before gasping in horror. "Oh, no! I bent one of the pages!"

   "What is that?" Adelbarret demanded impatiently, pointing to the sword hanging at Tanker's side.

   "A sword," Tanker replied with a shrug, wondering where on earth this strange woman was going with this.

   "And what is that?" she asked, pointing to Sam's sword.

   "A sword," Tanker began to reply before falling silent, his expression becoming very much like that of a person working through a complex math problem in his head. "Oh."

   "Yeah," Adelbarret agreed shortly. "I think between the two of you, she'll be able to pick up something."

   "Well, the weapon shop is right over there," Sam informed everyone, pointing at the placard swinging merrily above the door, a crudely drawn sword displayed on it.

   "Great! Let's go get you a new sword, Syd!" Tanker said enthusiastically. "I love girls with swords…"

   "That's gotta have some Freudian meaning," Adelbarret sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose wearily.

   "Huh?" Sydney asked, finally looking up from her book.

   "You want me to _what_?" the shopkeep asked, shooting the other men milling about the shop a look of utter disbelief, which they returned sympathetically.

   "Look, this shouldn't be hard to understand if you're a reasonably intelligent mammal," Adelbarrert growled, leaning over the counter. "We want to buy a sword for the little lady. She's not too strong, so we want _you_ to suggest one that she could handle."

The shopkeep shook his head, chuckling to himself. Then, clearing his throat, he looked up.

   "Look, doll," he began. 

This was as far as he got before he found a ladle being waved beneath his nose…but just barely.

   "Look, ma'am," he tried again. "That kid there, he looks like a swordsman to me."

Adelbarret glanced over her shoulder at Tanker, to whom the man was clearly pointing.

   "Yeah, he's a knight," she shrugged. "So what?"

   "Well, that kid's carrying a sword, too," he replied, gesturing to Sam.

   "So?" she asked impatiently.

   "Don't you know The Rules?" the shopkeep demanded, flabbergasted, more because he liked saying that word – even though he didn't – than because the woman's lack of knowledge of customs of travelling groups had shocked him. "You can't have three swordsmen in a group! Heck, two is a stretch. By all rights, I _should_ be taking away the blond kid's sword and giving him a dagger, or something."

   "No!" Sam whimpered sadly, huggling the weapon, and luckily having intelligence enough to keep it in the scabbard. "My sword!"

The shopkeep laughed. 

   "All right, all right. I won't try to take it away. I'm just sayin', I can't sell you a sword. And anyway, it's obvious that the little girlie over there's a magic user."

   "Huh?" Sydney asked, looking up once more from her book. But only once, she would likely have warned, had she succumbed entirely to the silliness of the situation.  

   "Well, that was a bust," Sam muttered dejectedly, kicking something large and shiny with the toe of his boot.

   "Yeah, bud, we know. We were there," Tanker reminded him waspishly, also kicking the large, shiny thing.

   "Hey, hey, hey, careful with that!" Adelbarret exclaimed. "That's a sword! And if I'm not mistaken, it's a lot better than that cheap piece of garbage you're carrying now, armour-boy." 

   "Hey, I think you're right!" Tanker said excitedly, reaching for it.

   "Why does Ed get the new sword?" Sam demanded, rather hurt. 

   "'Cause I'm a knight," Tanker said smugly and with highly questionable logic.

Sam shrugged.

   "Okay, I guess I can't argue with that."

And no more was said on that branch of the subject.

   "This is great," Tanker enthused, sliding his old sword out of his scabbard and sliding his new sword in. "Now that I have a new one, I can get rid of this old thing!"

Then, proving that he was indeed of lesser intelligence compared to…well, everyone and everything in the nearby vicinity, including the rock lying at the toe of his boot, he prepared to toss the old sword over his shoulder.

   "Oh, brother," Adelbarret grumbled as people shrieked and dodged out of the way of a flying sword. Then she stalked over to Tanker and gave him a good swift kick in the kneecap. 

'Ping!' went Adelbarret's foot off of Tanker's well-armoured knee. 

   "Ow!" said Tanker, unprepared for this assault.

   "You deserve it, you idiot," Adelbarret informed him severely.

   "Why?" he asked, blinking in confusion.

   "Ergh…" the large woman erghed. Then, with a deadly sort of calm, she continued. "Two reasons. First of all, Ed, what is the most important quality of a sword?"

   "To be sharp," Tanker replied right away. "If there's one thing I know, it's swords! If there are two things I know, it's swords and football. If there are three things I know-"

   "If there are three things you know, that's two more than I expected," Adelbarret said, glaring at him. "Now, let's continue. Yes, swords are sharp. That's why flinging them around while you're on a fairly populated town street is a bad idea! Get it?"

Tanker nodded.

   "Good boy. Now, second reason. Where were we just now?" 

Tanker pondered this.

   "We were in the weapons shop."

   "Very good. Now. Why were we in the weapons shop?"

The sound of leather gloves rubbing a metal helmet as Tanker scratched his head filled the air. 

   "Uh…we wanted to buy a weapon, I guess," he shrugged.

Adelbarret very deliberately turned around and counted a hundred to give herself time to calm down.

   "What sort of weapon?"

   "Wasn't it a sword?"

   "Hallelujah! He's figured it out!" Sam snickered from the sidelines.

   "Shut up!" Adelbarret barked before turning back to Tanker. "Alright. Next question. Who was this sword gonna be for?"  
   "Pointy," Tanker replied immediately. "Girls with swords are cool…"

   "Hey, what were you saying about Freud?" Sam asked, snorting with laughter.

   "And what happened when we tried to buy the sword?" Adelbarret continued, ignoring Sam.

   "He wouldn't give us one, right?"

   "Yeah. He wouldn't give us one. So, in other words, we don't have a sword for Pointy. Now do you see the first reason that throwing away your SPARE SWORD might be dumb?"

Tanker thought about this for a long time. Seconds turned to minutes. Minutes turned to hours. Sam, Sydney, and Adelbarret went for dinner. When they returned, Tanker hadn't moved from his 'thoughtful' pose. Finally, as they returned from a round of late-evening drinks, Tanker found his answer.

   "Not really," he admitted.

Seeing that Adelbarret was too incensed by this time to speak without erupting into a violent rage, Sam answered for her.

   "Ed, we were trying to find a sword for Pointy. Now we have an extra one to give her."

   "Oh!" Tanker exclaimed. "Right!"

   "'Right,' he says," Adelbarret grumbled, clutching her ladle tightly.

   "Look, guys," Sam interrupted briskly, cool and business-like for the second time ever. "Let's just give Pointy the sword. We can start training her to use it tomorrow."

   "Good idea," Tanker agreed. "Catch, Pointy."

Sydney, who was still absorbed with her book, and who was still getting used to being addressed as 'Pointy,' utterly missed this warning, and the next second, sat in the dust, unable to stand, rubbing her sore head.

    "Ow," she whimpered plaintively. Then, seeing Tanker's sheepish look, she sent him a poisonous glare. "I suppose you think that was funny."

   "Actually, Pointy, I think it was an accident," Sam interjected on his friend's behalf.

   "Shut up!" she barked, leaping to her feet and then reaching for the sword.

Tanker was just beginning to back away nervously from the sword-wielding girl, when an odd thing happened.

The sword flew suddenly from her grasp, nearly impaling another innocent and unfortunate passer-by. 

Sam looked at Tanker. Tanker looked at Sydney. Sydney down at her hand, then at the sword, and then at Adelbarret. Adelbarret hid her head in her hands in despair. 

   "I don't damn well believe it," she groaned. "The damn thing rejected her!"

Sam blinked.

   "Uh…what?"

   "I knew the rules were enforced kinda rigidly, but I didn't think they were _this_ deeply ingrained."

   "Uh, Adelbarret?" Sydney said slowly. "What are you talking about?"

   "Well," the older woman sighed. "When that guy in the shop said you couldn't use a sword, he _meant_ that you couldn't use a sword."

   "Oh," Sydney said somewhat dejectedly. Then she brightened. "Oh, well. I still have my stick!"

With that, she proceeded to whap Tanker soundly upside the head with it.

   "That's the stuff," she sighed happily.

   "Is it raining?" Tanker wondered, glancing up at the sky, wondering what had just hit him. 

Adelbarret, despite her annoyance, couldn't suppress a snort of laughter at this.

   "Alright, alright, alright. Obviously the sword isn't gonna work, Pointy, so we'll just have to find something else for you to use."

   "Oh, we'll think of something," Sydney assured her. "Now, let's go see Dr. Rozenstot!"

   "Oh, right. That's why we're here," Sam said, nodding thoughtfully. "I've gotta admit, I kinda forgot there."

   "Me, too," Tanker said.

Adelbarret looked at Sydney. Sydney looked at Sam. Sam looked at Adelbarret. 

Then, all three shook their heads simultaneously. It was just far too easy a shot for any respectable person to take.

   "So, this is where Rozenstot lives?" Sam asked dubiously as the four approached the front door of a fairly drab grey stone house a few streets from the centre of town.

   "Yup," Sydney replied cheerfully.

Sam frowned.

   "Are you sure? Plot points always look a little…I don't know…jazzier than this, don't they?"

   "Plot points?" Adelbarret repeated, scratching her head. "What the hell are you babblin' about now, kid?"

   "Never mind," Sam said quickly. "Let's just go knock, okay?"

With a shrug, Sydney stepped forward to do so. Within the cottage, the sound of footsteps grew gradually louder. The next moment, the door swung open to reveal a very familiar looking young woman with dark hair and skin, clad in brown short-shorts, a white tanktop, suspenders, a yellow tie, and green gloves and boots.

   "Can I help you?" she asked in a brisk, no-nonsense voice.

Sam, Sydney, and Tanker stared in silent bewilderment.

   "Yoli?" Sam finally managed to squeak out.

   "Uh, no, I'm Tiffie," the girl returned, shooting Adelbarret, who had apparently been the member of the group to retain her sanity, a curious look.

   "Hey, what's with you three?" Adelbarret demanded. "Pointy, you say you needed to talk to this Rozenstot guy? So, go do it!"

   "Um, right," Sydney agreed with a little laugh. "So, Miss Tiffie, does Dr. Rozenstot still live here?"

   "Dr. Rozenstot is my father," she replied guardedly. "Why do you need to see him?"

   "Look, suffice it to say, it's important," Tanker interjected, leaving his three fellow travellers wondering where on earth he learned a long word like 'suffice'. 

Tiffie regarded them suspiciously for a moment, and finally opened the door the rest of the way and stepped aside to let the four enter the cottage.

   "Who should I tell him is here?"

   "Well, you can say it's Smashing Pumpkin, but it wouldn't be true," Sam chuckled. "Ow," he concluded mournfully as a ladle connected with the side of his head.

   "Um, it's Yuluku, an old student," Sydney replied quickly, surreptitiously removing the machine gun from Adelbarret's belt in the interest of keeping Sam alive.

Shaking her head in confusion and laughing slightly, Tiffie turned and started up the staircase to the left of the door.

Once alone, the four stood awkwardly in the doorway, carefully taking in their surroundings. The interior of the cottage was much as the exterior had been: simple, neatly kept, and entirely, entirely average. A table and four chairs stood in the middle of the room, a few couches upholstered in forest green had been pushed along one wall. Bookcases lined the rest of the walls, resulting in the need for Sam, Tanker, and Adelbarret to restrain Sydney, whose eyes had gone instantly wide and shiny in delight at the sight of such a treasure trove.

   "C'mon, just let me go read a few," she pleaded, straining against Tanker's arm around her waist and Sam's and Adelbarret's arms wrapped tightly around each of hers. "I could probably be done four and back here before they got downstairs!"

   "Still have a bit of an addiction, don't you, Princess?" a friendly, jovial, and chillingly familiar voice laughed from the bottom of the staircase.

Sam, Sydney, and Tanker froze in shock for a moment, and then turned slowly to face the newcomer.

   "Principal Pratchert?!" Tanker hissed to Sam.

Sam groaned inwardly before muttering back to Tanker,

   "Why am I even surprised anymore?"


End file.
